On a 17-day private tour from mid-August into September 2018, my wife and I had a guide in Kenya who was certainly the best guide I’ve had in my 10 or so trips to Africa over the past three decades.

Mohamed Shariff was our driver/guide during the Kenya part of our Kenya/Tanzania tour set up through Monograms (Littleton, CO; 866/270-9841, monograms.com), a division of Globus that arranges private tours.

Many of Monograms’ tours are similar to Globus’ big tours...

In the mid-’90s, Russian friends invited me to Moscow to see some of their old slides from travels in southwestern Russia. On the wall of their living room, they showed slides of parts of the North Caucasus, specifically, Chechnya and Dagestan.

Their photos revealed beautiful, forbidding, majestic landscapes, and I was enthralled. I was working in Moscow at the time and didn’t think I would ever see these places, as a war had engulfed the area (and would again in the early...

After picking up a car in Munich, Germany, in late October 2018, we drove to northern Italy for a 10-day stay. While in Trieste for four days and in Cividale del Friuli (an hour’s drive away) for two, we successfully used our US handicap-parking placard without any problem, which was quite convenient. It also was thrifty, because handicap parking places were free of charge.

We wanted to inform ITN readers about a website for mobility impaired motorists: www.disabledmotorists.eu...